Bicycle ops - riding notes in Ann Arbor

Some favorite bicycle routes to Ann Arbor parks

A goal for 2025 - like it was for 2024 - is to visit every park in the Ann Arbor park system via bicycle.

Here are a few routes that will get me there without the stress of going on major streets in town.

1. Page Avenue. This neighborhood street runs north to south, allowing you to bypass Packard (via Harpst) or South Industrial (via Rosewood). Sidewalks are new this year. Harpst has a peculiar and difficult cut-through to Woodbury Park at the west, and Page connects to Esch for Esch Park and subsequently to King George which will get you south of Eisenhower.

2. Fair Avenue. If you start at West Stadium, you can take Fair via a cut-through sidewalk at an apartment complex and come out at Virginia Park. There are plenty of neighborhood streets between Liberty and Huron that will take you all the way into town. I will cross Seventh at Washington for the last piece of this ride towards town.

3. Downtown loop. This set of separated bike lanes runs around Division, Catherine, First, and William, Watch out for entry and exit from parking structures, cars ignoring no turn on red signs, and delivery vehicles in the bike lane. Even with all those obstacles it's a much improved set of routes to the Diag and Farmers Market.

4. Border to Border Trail to Parker Mill to Matthaei trail to Dixboro. There is a lovely set of connected paths that will take you all the way from Bandemer Park at the north side of town, over Argo Dam, down the Argo Cascades into Lower Town, past North Campus and the VA, east to Gallup Park and then to Parker Mill County Park. Cross under the road bridge and head north towards Matthaei Botanical Gardens, visit your favorite cactus, and then keep going into the settlement of Dixboro. Marshall Park is at the north end of this trail, with spring trilliums.

5. Traver Road. Pick up some gravel and maybe a bit of mud as you go along Traver Road, starting in Lower Town and continuing past Leslie Science Center and the golf course. You'll cross the Ann Arbor Railroad and come out at the Traverwood branch of the Ann Arbor District Library just in time to pick up Summer Game points. This is a lot more fun than the equivalent trek along Plymouth Road which has marked bike lanes but also four lanes of fast travel.

With 162 parks out there this won't get you to all of them all by itself. It is always nice to identify a little cut-through that all of the neighbors use but that isn't most driver's maps.

(Note to self, let's get maps for each of these added once I figure out the best way to do that.)

on the turn of the year, 2024 to 2025

Uncharacteristically warm and sunny on a mid-winter day in Ann Arbor, to the point where I put on just a sweater and rode my bike from home to the (bleak and empty) South University - full of new student hi-rises - for a boba tea.

My winter bike is "Ruby", my newly tuned up 1987 Diamondback Ascent. It has studded tires on it and becomes my primary bicycle once the first snow is on the ground. Travel on this mountain bike is maybe average of 9 mph or so, whereas on "Jenny" the e-bike I might expect to average 12+ mph. What this means in practice is that my effective range is way less and I am happy to content myself to modest trips that avoid the biggest hills.

2025 means restarting the "Bike Every Park" season, and I am looking forward to getting some on my January roster if the weather cooperates. I hit 129 parks out of 162 in 2024, and look forward to matching or beating that for 2025. (Goals, it's good to have goals.)

Bike Every Park ride, 2024-10-20

Two new parks for me today, Eberwhite Nature Area and Arboretum Nature Area (128 and 129), plus a radio activation of Hanover Square Park.

Eberwhite Woods is well marked around its perimeter, but the city-owned Eberwhite Nature Area was a bit harder to find. I ended up looping around it then going to the end of a private drive to get close enough to convince myself that I had been there. There's more in that woods to explore! Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12704596564

Arboretum Nature Area is a city-owned chunk of the Nichols Arboretum. Notably the peony garden is marked by a monumental rock that includes the city seal and the U's block M.

The bonus for the evening was taking my radio to Hanover Square Park on my bike and operating from there. It's very much a city park with a sculpture and a park bench to sit on. There was not quite enough light to see my notebook so I didn't log everything, but it was a good discussion with Gus W8AWT as net control for the University of Michigan Amateur Radio Club net. I know I have done radio from that part before - if I remember right I used the sculpture as a weird ground plane - but this is the first that I logged as such. The UMARC net had to change frequencies and use the ARROW repeater because the club repeater was acting wonky. Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12705330801

According to my notes, 15.9 miles today over the span of 89 minutes on the road is about 10.7 mph.

Difficult riding: Harpst Street to Woodbury Gardens / Woodbury Park, trees in path

Harpst Street dead ends right after Tremmel Ave. At the very end there is a "Road Ends" barricade, and a little path that leads to Woodbury Park and the Woodbury Gardens apartment complex.

This path has several good-sized trees growing in the middle of it. The fences on both sides, and the sidewalk leading up to it, make it pretty clear that it's a legitimate way through, but it's unclear who is actually responsible for it. On the Woodbury Gardens apartment complex side there's a sidewalk path that's half-covered in trees leading up to Woodbury Park, and a bike rack full of what looks very much like abandoned bikes. I can't tell if the bike rack belongs to the park or to the apartments.

To go through and connect from Harpst Street to Woodbury Park and Astor Avenue, you may very well need to walk your bike and maybe fold in your mirrors. But it is doable and it saves you the need to go all the way around.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12703602711

Night ride 2024-10-19

Decidedly chilly out, though I had enough warm clothes on (three layers) to make it work. Strava says "feels like 8 C". When it gets colder than this I will need to rethink night time clothing.

I did a little loop through the Old Fourth Ward, which has a street grid without much traffic and with lots of one-way streets. Note to self, explore there a bit more, it looks like it could be fine to zig zag through at night and not see more than a couple of cars.

After this afternoon's long ride, I did not recharge the battery. There was still enough juice to make this little loop. I was watching the battery gauge - in general I expect that 2 miles of advertised range is about that for actual range if the terrain is favorable, but 2 miles of range might only yield 1 mile if there's hills and I need to shift to greater assist.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12697322172

Bike Every Park ride, 2024-10-19

A lovely day to take in the parks. The city parks department has a challenge to visit all 162 of them; with this ride I visited 5 new parks (Forest, Earhart, Earhart West, Narrow Gauge Way, and Glazier Hill). The last of these was a judgement call, it appears that the access to this park is via an unmarked easement which I definitely went past but could not decisively identify.

The past to Forest Nature Area was via Gallup Park, and the Border to Border Trail that goes under US-23. The plans to rebuild US-23 involve closing the trail to work on new bridge supports, and none of the provided alternatives look great for access between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. One proposed route would take you across US-23 on the pedestrian bridge there, then up Earhart Road, across Glazier Way, then back down Huron Parkway. This would be fine at least in theory, and the path isn't awful. But some of the grades are prohibitively steep (14% on Glazier Way) for routine use.

Strava gives this as one of my longest routes, almost 30 km.

https://www.strava.com/activities/12696069882

Farmers market ride

When I first got my saddle bags the question was whether they would work for a Farmers Market run. After only a few tries it was pretty clear that they would be great for the purpose. You just have to follow Miss Piggy's dictum: never eat more than you can lift.

Saturdays in Ann Arbor are either choked with football traffic or not. This was a not week - the team is in Illinois which makes a ride to the market a whole lot more pleasant.

Market was busy even though I got there late with apples, squash, Italian red peppers, arugula, and a croissant on my shopping list. I had leeks on the list too but didn't see them so I'll have to look at Argus instead.

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12695002240

NIght ride 2024-10-18

It was cold, but not so cold that I needed any more than my usual thin and windproof gloves. At some point this winter it probably will make sense to look into getting pogies, but I'm not there just yet.

The only difficult part of the ride was the one stretch on inbound S Main St at Madison where there are apartment buildings and frequently someone parked in the unprotected, largely unmarked bicycle lane. I ended up on the sidewalk for half a block to get around the car, as there was too much traffic to veer over into the 30 mph traffic lane.

Something was happening at Hill Auditorium which I bypassed as best I could.

It's not quite Halloween yet, but it's pretty close, and the costumes from some of the folks on Sorority Row matched that. They looked chilly.

The ride was a loop around downtown and campus, about 30 minutes for a full loop which is very typical.

On Sträva at https://www.strava.com/activities/12689114970

Difficult riding: garbage cans on inbound S State Street

One in a series of "difficult riding" posts, describing some part of what should be an easy way to get around Ann Arbor that turns out to be exceptionally challenging.

Garbage day for South State Street in Ann Arbor is on Monday. After it's picked up, some of the cans live at least temporarily near or fully blocking the bike lane inbound. That lane is protected by flex posts for part of its way, from Granger to Hoover.

If I'm just out for a ride and not hustling to get into town, I'll stop from time to time and move cans out of the way and onto the easement, but there's only so much you can do every week. Residents are supposed to pick up their cans within 24 hours.

V., who rides that route frequently, has been keeping track. 38% of her rides have trash cans that obstruct the northbound bike lane on State Street between Granger and Hoover (4 blocks). Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesdays are the worst.

Gotta get the trash picked up right? So it's not easy to see how to fix this. It would help if the trash collector was mindful of this problem, but I don't know if their machinery is precise enough not to plant a trash can exactly in the space needed to make it not a problem.

2000 mile check-in on "Jenny Ray", my 2023 REI e-bike

My 900 mile check-in for "Jenny Ray", my REI Gen E 1.1 e-bike, was on June 2 - see https://vielmetti.typepad.com/logbook/2024/06/900-mile-status-report.html. This is an update at the 2000 mile mark.

1100 miles in 4.5 months is what, about 250 miles per month? That's good for summer riding. Snow riding will be less, and not on this bike.

I'm still operating without fenders, which means I still get wet. One bike shop had a clever design for fat-tire bikes that at least protected the back wheel without needing to take it off. Next time I'm near Wheels in Motion, stop in to see how things fit.

What did get added very helpfully is a rear mirror, installed with a program from Walk Bike Washtenaw for a free mirror with free installation. https://www.walkbikewashtenaw.org/mirror for details.

The trip computer still averages out at a little over 11 mph average speed, which matches up with my experience. The motor on the bike provides enough oomph that climbing hills around town is not appreciably slowing me down. It also says that I crossed the 10000 minute mark earlier this month.

I've had a couple instances of late where if I pedal hard in first gear that the chain will jump off the sprocket. Fortunately it's not all that often and it's completely avoidable by not using that gear and not pedaling quite so hard from a standstill. I also tend to wear gloves when I'm riding so that it's easy to put things back together.

At 2000 miles I can see that I'd like to put 5000 miles on this bike, which could be another year of steady use. Beyond 5000 I think it will be time to explore what the next bicycle might be, since I'll have some opinions about what I like and don't like.